In American culture we have seen standards of attractiveness that are substantially slimmer for women than men (which can be seen in comments/beliefs that overweight women are “fat” yet overweight men are “sturdy”). And over time, this standard for women has only gotten worse, with women trying to lose more and more weight. “This media ideal is quite pervasive in society, with female cartoon characters, movie/television actresses, Playboy centerfolds, and Miss America Pageant winners all having become increasingly thinner over the decades.”

So Timothy A. Judge, from the University of Florida and Daniel M. Cable, from the London Business School set out to test the norms that society holds very different body standards for men versus women by examining “the relationship between weight and income and the degree to which the relationship varies by gender.” Here are some of their key findings:

• “For men, increases in weight have positive linear effects of pay but at diminished returns at above-average levels of weight.”

• Gaining weight is more damaging to women’s earnings than to men. “For women, increases in weight have negative linear effects on pay, but the negative effects are stronger at below-average than at above-average weight levels.”

• “Whereas women are punished for any weight gain, very thin women receive the most severe punishment for their first few pounds of weight gain. This finding is consistent with research showing that the media’s depiction of an unrealistically think female ideal leads people to see this ideal as normative, expected, and central to female attractiveness.”

• “Very thin” women earned approximately $22,000 more than their average weight counterparts.

• “Thin” women earned a little over $7,000 more than their average weight counterparts.

• “Heavy” and “Very Heavy” women lost over $9,000 and almost $19,000, respectively, than their average weight counterparts.